Lebanon’s waste: another ongoing saga

ENAR

The long-term effects of Lebanon’s 2015 waste-management crisis will likely linger for years, and chances that the experience will be relived in the medium-term remain high. Incineration is the approved future for nearly half of Lebanon’s waste, despite the fact that opposition has repeatedly derailed incineration plans in the past and opponents to government waste management plans remain adamantly opposed to incineration. For nearly eight months in 2015, municipal solid waste (MSW) in Beirut and most of the Mount Lebanon governorate (excluding the Jbeil district) was not being collected. Municipalities in this service zone—where waste management, from collection to treatment and landfilling, was conducted by Sukleen and Sukomi, children of parent company Averda—turned to open dumping of trash in the absence of another solution. It also prompted a considerable increase in waste-burning. When the crisis, which was sparked by the closure of the country’s largest sanitary landfill, abated with the